1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns interaction with remote devices in general, and a method and system for performing remote interaction with low-resource devices, including display, playback and synchronization of multimedia content and receiving input from such devices.
2. Background Information
Today, there are several software tools that enable users to interact with a host computer from a remote location through software products running on both a remote computer and the host computer. These software products generally fall under the category of “remote control” software, and include such products as PC Anywhere, Carbon Copy, Windows Terminal Server, and RDP (remote desktop protocol) for Microsoft Windows operating system environments, and X-Windows for UNIX and LINUX environments.
As shown in FIG. 1, these software products typically include a set of client-side software components 10 running on a remote computer 12 that interact with host-side software components 14 running on a host computer 16 via a communication link over a network 18. Notably, the client-side software components require both an operating system (OS) 20 and computer hardware resources components to enable the operating system to run, such as a high speed CPU 22 and memory 24. As a result, remote computer 12 requires both hardware and software (i.e., the OS) components that are fairly expensive. Furthermore, much of the hardware and software components are duplicative when considering that similar hardware and OS software is required for host computer 16.
Recent advancements have also lead to the availability of standalone devices that are used for displaying and/or generating multimedia content. For example, digital picture frames are used to display one or more digital pictures that are stored on a memory media card; in order to change the pictures, the memory media card needs to be changed. Another common stand-alone device is the set-top box, which enables users to receive various multimedia content via a television network (e.g., cable or satellite network), and many models further enable users to access the Internet via a dial-up or cable link.